Yes, a mailbox hit by a meteorite supposedly sold for over $80,000.00 a few years ago, a Smiledon skull sold for over $250,000.00 and a painting of an obese naked woman sprawled out on a couch sold for 80 million. I would have expected some of the key items to sell. An actual meteorite is much more interesting to me than any of the items I just mentioned.
Consignors have a lot money tied into these items. Perhaps if the commissions were lowered a bit, some of the high priced items would have sold. A zero percent sell-through on any item priced over $50,000.00 for a big auction house is a train wreck in my opinion. I expected to see much better results as there were many fine items listed. Just my opinion which is shared by many, Adam ________________________________ From: Yinan Wang <[email protected]> To: Adam Hupe <[email protected]> Cc: Adam <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 6:21 PM Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Heritage auction No offense intended, but how do you interpret this auction as a train wreck? Having worked in the natural history auction industry, this was a very good auction for everything except the high priced pieces. From what I observed, the sell-through rate was probably over 80%, which is great for a natural history auction. Many of the lower and middle ranged items went for 3-10 times the market price. High priced meteorites in general don't seem to sell often at auction. For example, the Willamette was very well marketed last year but did not sell at $650,000. Looking at past auctions, it seems $90,000 to be the top price for a meteorite sold at auction in the past few years, at least with this auction house. Personally I think the market for extreme high end meteorites may not be well established in auction houses yet. Yes, someone will (and has) shell out up to 2 million for a dinosaur at auction but won't do the same for a meteorite. -Yinan On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 9:08 PM, Adam Hupe <[email protected]> wrote: > I think the timing of this auction during the middle of a political campaign > might account for the train wreck witnessed today or the economy is worse off > then anybody could imagine. Prices were all over the place, some excellent, > some poor but not a single item exceeded $50,000.00 even with the huge > buyer's premium in place. A few of my friends watched parts of this auction > on CNN and thought many of the descriptions should have been based on the > importance of the items instead of comparing them to famous artwork. > > All of the big auction houses are struggling right now from what I have > read. Hopefully things will settle back down after the election. > > Best Regards, > > > Adam > ______________________________________________ > > Visit the Archives at > http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html > Meteorite-list mailing list > [email protected] > http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
